The objective of this article is to see how Lean and BPM can complement each other and thereby improve the overall Business.
As we know, Lean is a technique to improve a business process. Lean aims to preserve value with less effort. Any activity that does not add value is regarded as a waste and should be either eliminated or reduced. Lean’s strength lies in its simplicity, quick implementation, faster lead times, and better productivity. All this leads to soft benefits like improved customer satisfaction and employee morale over the long run.
BPM on the other hand is a management approach that looks at a organization as a set of business processes. So basically BPM is a management methodology that aims to improve the business processes. The steps in BPM are design, model, execute, monitor and optimise. Lean improves processes, before BPM automates the best practices and manages them.
The benefit of implementing BPM is automated controls and data gathering about the performance of the process. Customers demand transparency and a seamless, experience. BPM helps in breaking the SILO’ across departments and aligning them with customer need.
Challenges of Lean
As a practicing Lean coach, I have observed that it is difficult to quantify the effectiveness of the changes and to continuously improve the process using process metrics and analysis. Many clients are not inclined to agree to process automation or real system integration to completely “lean” their processes.
One of the challenges of deploying Lean across a company is that it is difficult to gather the data and implement the controls that are recommended by analysis. This, gap can be filled by BPM. The simulation capabilities of BPM provides data about the process. Instead of having to wait, Lean teams can start analysis using future state (“To Be”) performance information provided by the BPM system. Lack of adequate metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are some of the biggest challenges during the Future State implementation in Lean projects.
How can Lean and BPM complement each other?
Lean and BPM complement each other by providing high value with low effort. BPM solves the key challenges of Lean mentioned above to make the Lean initiative more effective. BPM takes the process improvement to the next level. It is good to intiate BPM when the future-state process gets designed in the Lean cycle. The BPM team can contribute with user stories and defining integration points.
A lean project with BPM (process control and automation) results in an additional 10% or more on top of the values gained from Lean alone. BPM can contribute to Lean by providing the following :
KPIs – Key Performance indicators – KPI’s help Lean to eliminate wastes
SLAs – Service Level agreements — SLA’s provide visibility to the management on value provided to the client and the ability to act on unmet SLAs
Dashboards –Helps management evaluate the performance of the team
Optimised Load balance using task list — A BPM task list improves load-balancing which in turn leads to improvement in the performance of the process.
Simulated projections – Projected performances which can help in designing the future state in Lean
How can Lean help BPM?
The Value Stream Maps(VSM) created by the Lean teams, helps the BPM team understand the key areas to focus on for their process modeling and how certain processes contribute to overall value to the company. Also Lean can provide BPM teams with failure points that their process models must factor in and reduce.
About the author:
Rajesh Subramanya is a Business advisor & his speciality is ‘Lean’ training & consulting, Continuous improvement, Business transformation and Process optimization to deliver maximum value to clients. He worked in MNC’s across the globe
Vikram Mg 